Yule Ornament Idea: Cute and Crafty Pine Cones

What could be a more natural ornament to festoon your Yule tree with than a pine cone? Clearly they’re nature’s own ornaments, and they look fantastic on anyone’s tree. There’s about a hundred ways to make your own pine cone ornaments, and many of them involve real pinecones. In fact, I have a distinct childhood memory of taking a pine cone, outlining each scale with Elmer’s craft glue, and then shaking glitter over the whole thing.

I had a blast doing that, but I don’t recall those particular ornaments returning to our tree the following year. Since my mom was religious about keeping all the ornaments we kids made until they disintegrated (I’m fairly certain there’s still an ugly Perler bead ornament or two in her collection), I have a feeling these real pine cone ornaments were very fragile. Also, glitter is evil.

In either case, the underlying philosophy is the same. You take an egg-shaped base (crumple tin foil in the fabric cone, a styrofoam egg in the paper cone), and–from tip to top–you overlap individual scales atop each other, attaching them with hot glue, pins, or whatever else seems appropriate. You can cap them off with a special piece of fabric or paper, or attach some decorative greenery for a more festive flair.

Instructions for the fabric pine cone can be found at the website linked above, or your own common sense and this template. The Hybrid Chick has a great phototutorial for the paper pine cone on her page, but the basic gist is that you cut a 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper into 1″ x 1″ squares, then fold two corners to the center to get a shape that looks a bit like a box house. Then you pin the scales point-down onto a styrofoam egg and hot glue some embellishments to the top. Easy peasy.

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About the Project

I'm Melissa Zupan. This blog began in 2008 as a record of my attempt to work through Timothy Roderick's book, "Wicca: A Year and a Day." Since then I joined up with a merry coven of Gardnerian witches and became an initiate in 2013.
The blog is now a fuller record of my life and work in Wicca. Right now, there's no main theme. I just write what I want to write.

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